Are you ready to switch off your screens and ponder or discuss another writing/conversation prompt from my friend Tyrean Martinson’s book? Here’s my take on it.
Can you hear this waltz faintly playing at the background of whatever you are currently thinking? Because it is such an earworm? It’s the most wonderful time of the year …
There! If it didn’t play in your mind, by clicking this link, it surely does now …
And yet, what a different time it is with all the blinking lights and mall Santas, the blow-up decorations and supermarket Christmas evergreen endless loops, bake-offs and sing-alongs, Christmas dinners and tree lightings compared to the very quiet time I also love so very much. With a candle burning while sipping a glass of something while staring into the dusk of an afternoon. A German hymn playing in the background and reminiscences of old Christmas tales. A walk in Nature, all in silence, with the cold nipping at my nose. But yes, above all, the quiet. The meditation.
Another picture rises in my mind. That of a stable and a couple having their first baby without any support from whomsoever. They barely have anything to lay down on and rest. And into the miracle of new life and the exhaustion of travel and birth burst utter strangers gawking at the baby and seeming to perceive more than just a newborn. They can hardly be made out as to who they are in the scant stable light – some of them look really rough – shepherds are nomads armed to defend their herds. Maybe somebody realizes what has happened and brings a gift to the new family – some bread, some cheese, anything a villager might be able to spare. And then, there are others who are traveling, following a comet that seems to beckon them to the stable. Wise men who are wise enough not to fall into the trap that is set to them in the shape of a question as to where to find the holy child. They are often pictured as kings. Were they? They were at least important enough to be seen by King Herod. They aren’t able to prevent another Biblical mass murder of first-born sons, just that of the baby in the stable. It’s a rough tale. It ends brutally and in a flight. And yet, it is the beginning of a story of hope and faith, accompanied by outcasts praising what they have seen and angel choirs filling people’s minds.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year … Maybe it is. It seems to be a climax of darkness being broken by light. Of bleakness outdoors interrupted by abundance inside. Of cold countered by the warmth of stoves and human kindness. The stressful and the meditative. The worldly and the sacred. It’s all contradictory. We are walking forward to another turn of a year and looking back over our shoulders. We are at a moment in time, overwhelmed by all the moments that counted for us in the past and by our hopes for and fears of the future.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. To me it is, but I’m very much aware that it is not for everyone. So, I hope that whoever is out there and painfully feels the clashing of contradictions and oppositions more than the variety that lies in their very nature – I wish you Peace. And to all who celebrate it, a Merry and Blessed Christmas!
